In the spring of 1932, with almost no one noticing, a way of life centuries old was drawing to a close. Ironically, this occurrence had very little to do with the economic problems plaguing the society at the time. In the midst of our nation's worst depression a marvel of twentieth century technology and engineering had been built in the Cobble Mountain basin.
At the time of its completion, the Cobble Mountain dam was the highest earthen dam of its type in the world, and the reservoir it created had a holding capacity of 22.8 billion gallons. The completion of this project marked Springfield's successful effort to harness the Little River to meet its growing water needs.
It also symbolized the end of an era for the hill towns of Blandford, Granville and Russell. As water began to surge from the reservoir into the Little River gorge and eventually onward to Springfield, it left in its wake a way of life which had endured for almost two centuries.
Historically, most of the inhabitants of towns such as Blandford and Granville had survived by working the land in one form or another; doing whatever the land and the area lent itself to. People grew most of their own food, owned a small herd of cows, raised pigs and other farm animals. Income to purchase what they could not grow or produce themselves came from the sale of hay, cream, eggs, farm animals, timber, maple syrup, fruit, etc.
It was a challenging and demanding existence. The topography and climate left much to be desired. The rocky, shallow soil did not lend itself to the production of grains as a cash crop, except for corn. Only after the turn of the century did many hill town farm families obtain telephones and other luxuries. For much of its history, the Cobble Mountain area had done without what would be called modern conveniences.
FARM ABANDONMENT
Construction of the Cobble Mountain dam and reservoir actually accelerated a process which had already been going on for quite some time - farm abandonment. By the middle years of the nineteenth century, it was obvious for all who chose to see, that the hill towns were dying. All over New England, rural population was in decline, while that of industrial centers, was on the rise.
Hill towns such as Blandford and Granville did not escape this trend. A quick glance at census statistics confirms this point:
YEAR BLANDFORD GRANVILLE
POPULATION POPULATION
1830 1590 1649
1850 1418 1305
1870 1026 1293
1900 836 1050
1920 479 655
The situation was not the same for the town of Russell. Its experience was somewhat different due to the presence of the Westfield River, mills and the railroad.
MEMORIES
In the Cobble Mountain area, we are fortunate to still have older residents alive who remember the days before the dam was built. Some of them are the children of families who were displaced by the reservoir, including Horace and Franklin Cook, Byron and Greta Richards. Others are local residents who have lived most of their lives in the area such as Walter Phelon, his sister Edith Phelon, Doris Hayden, Francis and Dolly Hunt, and Elmer and Edna Hart. Interviewing these people and others has provided me with a wealth of information about life in the area during the "old days."
Byron Richards remembered growing up on a 140-acre farm on South Street with about 40 acres cleared for "mowins." Anything that was not fields was fenced in- that was pasture-timber and all." Byron's Uncle Henry inherited the adjacent farm and big house from grandfather Isaac Richards. This was a beautiful two-story colonial. The twin chimney foundations are still clearly visible in the old cellar hole. Herbert Richards, Byron's father, inherited a smaller house a bit further down on South Street.
How did the Richards' family earn a livelihood back in the early twentieth century? They raised some corn and potatoes. What they did not use for themselves or livestock, they sold. The cream from their small dairy herd was sold to the Westfield Creamery. They also did some sugaring, and like other hill town farmers during slack time, Herbert Richards hired himself out.
The Richards' family sold out to the Peck Lumber Company in late 1925 because they knew their farm would eventually be taken by the City of Springfield. Peck's offer of $6,500 seemed reasonable given the circumstances. Byron remembered his parents reaction to these events as one of resignation. There was nothing they could do about it - but just make the best of it.
Byron also remembered as a young boy bringing cows up to the Atwater pasture off South Quarter Road in Russell. The Atwater place (already abandoned) had a large amount of beautiful open fields
"mostly mowins with pasture below that." Visiting this site today requires a lot of imagination to see it as Byron Richards saw it in approximately 1915. All of those fields, by the 1980's, had become mature forests; reinforcing the observation of how quickly nature reclaims what man has abandoned. It is interesting to notice that change is a first principle in both society, and the natural world. Those old Atwater fields, turned to forests, have recently. been cut over by the city as part of a forestry plan for the watershed.
Horace Cook clearly remembers growing up on his family's 250-acre farm on lower Falls Road (presently called Herrick Road). A fair size dairy herd along with a big sugar orchard provided the family with an adequate income. His father, Frank Cook, tapped over 1500 trees at times. The family also raised sheep for a while.
Horace also recalls that his father did a good deal of negotiating with the city before selling out. This apparently was a difficult decision for the Cooks. After selling their farm, the Cooks moved up to Route 23 in Blandford where Horace's younger brother Franklin and his wife Agnes still reside today. That property, however, was not a farm.
Horace remembers that his father was upset and saddened by this move because he very much enjoyed farming and their way of life. According to Horace Cook, "None of the people who were uprooted liked it very much." Although there weren't too many working farms left in the Cobble Mountain basin in the 1920's, some like the Cooks, had strong ties to the land. While agriculture continued to decline the town was actually growing in population during the period under discussion.
In the Cobble Mountain area, an already struggling community had to face an additional pressure not present in most other places. In 1906, the state legislature in Boston concurred with Springfield's belief that the Little River and its watershed would be an ideal location for a reservoir.
The system begun in 1907 and finally completed in 1932 consists of three reservoirs (Borden Brook, Cobble Mountain, and Provin Mountain) as well as a filtration and power plant. The complex was built in two major stages - Borden Brook (1907-1909) and Cobble Mountain (1927- 1932) with various other improvements made along the way. The Cobble Mountain project was by far the larger and more important of the two. A good portion of Blandford, part of northern Granville, and a small section of Russell make up the system.
The impact on residents in the immediate vicinity of the reservoir was dramatic. They had to leave. The decision to continue or give up their traditional way of life had in effect been taken from them. Families whose land had been designated as necessary for the project had no choice but to acquiesce. Even if they were opposed to the plan, they did not have the political clout or resources to resist. Those who were fortunate to have some valuable timber on their property might sell out to a lumber company like Peck for a good price. Otherwise, they pretty much had to accept what the City of Springfield offered them.
Reactions to the Cobble Mountain project were mixed. The majority of area residents, who were not faced with the loss of their farms, were indifferent. For those most directly affected, reactions varied. Some were deeply saddened. It meant adjustments, hardships, and coping with feelings of separation and loss. Others accepted the reservoir as a reality and simply resigned themselves to make the best of things. After all, problems were nothing new to people who were constantly engaged in a struggle for survival. They were accustomed to hardship and uncertainty.
Some residents may have even welcomed the change. If you had a 200-acre farm, but were unmarried or widowed, with no children and advancing in years, the city's offer might have sounded reasonably attractive even though it would mean change and adjustment.
For people who were living a marginal existence with little hope of bettering their situation, the reservoir may have been a blessing in disguise. For others who made a decent living, whose material needs were moderate and who loved the land and the way of life which the hill towns offered-giving up their homes was a difficult and painful process. In interviewing many of the surviving children of families displaced by the reservoir, I encountered all of these reactions in their remembrances.
As the last family in the Cobble Mountain area packed its possessions and left its home on South Street, Falls Road, or South Quarter Road what were they really leaving behind? What kind of life were they giving up - what kind of life was dis- appearing?
I suspect that it was a way of life which is very difficult for most people today to imagine or comprehend. Is there anything to be gained from trying to study and understand that past? Is it possible, even for those who have the interest and curiosity, to understand what life was like for earlier generations living in rural Western Massachusetts?
If one hikes the abandoned road which still goes by the old Cook place, one can gain some sense of why such ties were strong.
Hill town farm families used the land in any way they could to earn a livelihood. Just as Frank Cook raised sheep and tapped sugar maples, Doris Hayden relates, "My father-in-law probably started his ice business in the early 1900's. There was a pond on his farm, so why not get a cash crop from it. As he grew older, my husband carried on the business until electric refrigeration killed the demand for ice." (Stone Walls: Blandford 250th Anniversary Edition, p. 6).
Harvesting ice was the most important source of income for the Hayden's in the early twentieth century. Elmer Hart, the, oldest living resident of Blandford at 90 years of age, recalls that he worked for Ralph Hayden for a while. "While Ralph took the two-horse team and wagon, I took a one-horse team and peddled ice on the side roads." Hill town residents were very resourceful in the ways they used the land to help support themselves.
Families sometimes left behind more than cellar holes and the memories of their progeny. Some were letter writers and diary keepers. The Cook family on Falls Road, for example, offer us a wonderful glimpse of what everyday life was like at the turn of the century. The Cooks were diary keepers and their notations provide us with a rich harvest of information.
In his 1891 diary, 55 year old Horace Burdette Cook, living on a 200-acre hill farm, describes typical winter chores: breaking out the road with his oxen, drawing wood, tending to his stock, fixing a harness for the colt, moving hay, chopping sap wood, repairing the ox yoke and working for William Bates. There was also time for haircuts, funerals, looking in on neighbors, and going up to the center.
In 1886, at the age of 50, Horace Cook married Lucelia Sizer. Lucelia was 39 years old at this time, and a widow with several children of her own from a previous marriage. This second marriage produced two additional children, Frank and Naomi.
In the tradition of the time, she does not tell us much about her feelings or personal life directly. But her 1904 diary does reveal a 57-year-old woman with an enormous amount of energy, working away at an endless number of tasks. Her days appear to be filled with a continuous routine of baking, cooking, mending, ironing, mopping, quilting, preserving, chopping wood and helping with other farm chores. The lives of hill town women were hard and demanding, but not without a sense of accomplishment.
There are numerous ways to learn about the past. I have mentioned and illustrated some of them in this article. My experience has taught me that people’s memories, while at times imperfect, are nonetheless invaluable. Doris Hayden, a genealogist and unofficial town historian living in Blandford since 1909, related an incident which beautifully reinforces this point. One day quite a number of years ago, she and Frank Cook were up in the Blandford Cemetery seeking some information when he reminded her, "You've got to ask us old folks questions while we are still here." I could not agree more.
The Cobble Mountain experience is significant for a number of reasons. First, it is a microcosm of what happened throughout New England during the latter part of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The construction of the dam and reservoir simply accelerated a process of change which was already well under way. Some residents were very conscious of the changes overtaking the area after the turn of the century.
Stephen Pitoniak, in his History of Western Massachusetts (p. 38), shares with the reader some poignant thoughts related to him by Mrs. Bess Banker Day, who lived in the South Quarter area during that time period. Mrs. Day recalled, "After Springfield bought up South Quarter, it was the end of the era. There were no houses left now, roads were closed, and what was once a pleasant little community of neighbors, has been left to the deer and porcupine." She also stated, "When I look back to life on the mountain, it was a contented place, between cycles. In my mother's young adulthood, the urge hit the community to Go West, young man,' and grow with the country. In mine it was 'move to the city and get a job;' forget the farm. When Springfield bought South Quarter, and put in Cobble Mountain Dam, it was the last of the mountain community."
The once active farms of the Cobble Mountain area have ceased to exist. Remnants of this community, however, still survive; they are the stone walls, cellar holes, aging sugar maples, and abandoned roads seemingly leading nowhere. We also have the memories held by the surviving children and grandchildren of those who once lived in the area. In addition, earlier inhabitants kept diaries, and wrote letters, poems and memoirs. One can also discover much about these people and their way of life from newspapers, old photographs, town reports, tax and probate court records, and many other historical tracings. It is important to keep the memory of this community alive.
The history of Cobble Mountain has something to teach us. It not only offers us a glimpse of what life was like for earlier generations, but can tell us much about the land, the patterns of people's lives and how the two interacted, i.e. how the land and nature shaped the community and vice versa. As we examine this history, we may learn something about ourselves in the process. The story of Cobble Mountain reveals much about what is basic to life wherever it exists.
What further revelations await those willing to explore the life patterns of an age gone by the history of a hill farm community - the story of Cobble Mountain? Perhaps for the curious, Cobble Mountain is not the end of an era, but rather the beginning of an adventure of discovery.
*************************************************************************************************************************************************
Byron Richards died October 16, 1987, just as this article was completed. The author will always remember, with gratitude, the lengthy conversations we had about the Cobble Mountain area and especially the walk we took down South Street to the old homestead in October of 1986.
My interest in nature and the history of hill farm communities was energized by his willingness to help and share what he knew.
Byron Herbert Richards (1905-1987) will be missed and fondly remembered.
Dietrich Schlobohm lives in West Springfield with wife, Feelie and son, Matthew. He is Professor of History at Springfield College and teaches American History. His special interest and expertise is in environmental history. He is a conservationist and amateur naturalist and enjoys the outdoors; hiking, cross country skiing, animal tracking and wilderness camping.
From Stone Walls Magazine,
At the time of its completion, the Cobble Mountain dam was the highest earthen dam of its type in the world, and the reservoir it created had a holding capacity of 22.8 billion gallons. The completion of this project marked Springfield's successful effort to harness the Little River to meet its growing water needs.
It also symbolized the end of an era for the hill towns of Blandford, Granville and Russell. As water began to surge from the reservoir into the Little River gorge and eventually onward to Springfield, it left in its wake a way of life which had endured for almost two centuries.
Historically, most of the inhabitants of towns such as Blandford and Granville had survived by working the land in one form or another; doing whatever the land and the area lent itself to. People grew most of their own food, owned a small herd of cows, raised pigs and other farm animals. Income to purchase what they could not grow or produce themselves came from the sale of hay, cream, eggs, farm animals, timber, maple syrup, fruit, etc.
It was a challenging and demanding existence. The topography and climate left much to be desired. The rocky, shallow soil did not lend itself to the production of grains as a cash crop, except for corn. Only after the turn of the century did many hill town farm families obtain telephones and other luxuries. For much of its history, the Cobble Mountain area had done without what would be called modern conveniences.
FARM ABANDONMENT
Construction of the Cobble Mountain dam and reservoir actually accelerated a process which had already been going on for quite some time - farm abandonment. By the middle years of the nineteenth century, it was obvious for all who chose to see, that the hill towns were dying. All over New England, rural population was in decline, while that of industrial centers, was on the rise.
Hill towns such as Blandford and Granville did not escape this trend. A quick glance at census statistics confirms this point:
YEAR BLANDFORD GRANVILLE
POPULATION POPULATION
1830 1590 1649
1850 1418 1305
1870 1026 1293
1900 836 1050
1920 479 655
The situation was not the same for the town of Russell. Its experience was somewhat different due to the presence of the Westfield River, mills and the railroad.
MEMORIES
In the Cobble Mountain area, we are fortunate to still have older residents alive who remember the days before the dam was built. Some of them are the children of families who were displaced by the reservoir, including Horace and Franklin Cook, Byron and Greta Richards. Others are local residents who have lived most of their lives in the area such as Walter Phelon, his sister Edith Phelon, Doris Hayden, Francis and Dolly Hunt, and Elmer and Edna Hart. Interviewing these people and others has provided me with a wealth of information about life in the area during the "old days."
Byron Richards remembered growing up on a 140-acre farm on South Street with about 40 acres cleared for "mowins." Anything that was not fields was fenced in- that was pasture-timber and all." Byron's Uncle Henry inherited the adjacent farm and big house from grandfather Isaac Richards. This was a beautiful two-story colonial. The twin chimney foundations are still clearly visible in the old cellar hole. Herbert Richards, Byron's father, inherited a smaller house a bit further down on South Street.
How did the Richards' family earn a livelihood back in the early twentieth century? They raised some corn and potatoes. What they did not use for themselves or livestock, they sold. The cream from their small dairy herd was sold to the Westfield Creamery. They also did some sugaring, and like other hill town farmers during slack time, Herbert Richards hired himself out.
The Richards' family sold out to the Peck Lumber Company in late 1925 because they knew their farm would eventually be taken by the City of Springfield. Peck's offer of $6,500 seemed reasonable given the circumstances. Byron remembered his parents reaction to these events as one of resignation. There was nothing they could do about it - but just make the best of it.
Byron also remembered as a young boy bringing cows up to the Atwater pasture off South Quarter Road in Russell. The Atwater place (already abandoned) had a large amount of beautiful open fields
"mostly mowins with pasture below that." Visiting this site today requires a lot of imagination to see it as Byron Richards saw it in approximately 1915. All of those fields, by the 1980's, had become mature forests; reinforcing the observation of how quickly nature reclaims what man has abandoned. It is interesting to notice that change is a first principle in both society, and the natural world. Those old Atwater fields, turned to forests, have recently. been cut over by the city as part of a forestry plan for the watershed.
Horace Cook clearly remembers growing up on his family's 250-acre farm on lower Falls Road (presently called Herrick Road). A fair size dairy herd along with a big sugar orchard provided the family with an adequate income. His father, Frank Cook, tapped over 1500 trees at times. The family also raised sheep for a while.
Horace also recalls that his father did a good deal of negotiating with the city before selling out. This apparently was a difficult decision for the Cooks. After selling their farm, the Cooks moved up to Route 23 in Blandford where Horace's younger brother Franklin and his wife Agnes still reside today. That property, however, was not a farm.
Horace remembers that his father was upset and saddened by this move because he very much enjoyed farming and their way of life. According to Horace Cook, "None of the people who were uprooted liked it very much." Although there weren't too many working farms left in the Cobble Mountain basin in the 1920's, some like the Cooks, had strong ties to the land. While agriculture continued to decline the town was actually growing in population during the period under discussion.
In the Cobble Mountain area, an already struggling community had to face an additional pressure not present in most other places. In 1906, the state legislature in Boston concurred with Springfield's belief that the Little River and its watershed would be an ideal location for a reservoir.
The system begun in 1907 and finally completed in 1932 consists of three reservoirs (Borden Brook, Cobble Mountain, and Provin Mountain) as well as a filtration and power plant. The complex was built in two major stages - Borden Brook (1907-1909) and Cobble Mountain (1927- 1932) with various other improvements made along the way. The Cobble Mountain project was by far the larger and more important of the two. A good portion of Blandford, part of northern Granville, and a small section of Russell make up the system.
The impact on residents in the immediate vicinity of the reservoir was dramatic. They had to leave. The decision to continue or give up their traditional way of life had in effect been taken from them. Families whose land had been designated as necessary for the project had no choice but to acquiesce. Even if they were opposed to the plan, they did not have the political clout or resources to resist. Those who were fortunate to have some valuable timber on their property might sell out to a lumber company like Peck for a good price. Otherwise, they pretty much had to accept what the City of Springfield offered them.
Reactions to the Cobble Mountain project were mixed. The majority of area residents, who were not faced with the loss of their farms, were indifferent. For those most directly affected, reactions varied. Some were deeply saddened. It meant adjustments, hardships, and coping with feelings of separation and loss. Others accepted the reservoir as a reality and simply resigned themselves to make the best of things. After all, problems were nothing new to people who were constantly engaged in a struggle for survival. They were accustomed to hardship and uncertainty.
Some residents may have even welcomed the change. If you had a 200-acre farm, but were unmarried or widowed, with no children and advancing in years, the city's offer might have sounded reasonably attractive even though it would mean change and adjustment.
For people who were living a marginal existence with little hope of bettering their situation, the reservoir may have been a blessing in disguise. For others who made a decent living, whose material needs were moderate and who loved the land and the way of life which the hill towns offered-giving up their homes was a difficult and painful process. In interviewing many of the surviving children of families displaced by the reservoir, I encountered all of these reactions in their remembrances.
As the last family in the Cobble Mountain area packed its possessions and left its home on South Street, Falls Road, or South Quarter Road what were they really leaving behind? What kind of life were they giving up - what kind of life was dis- appearing?
I suspect that it was a way of life which is very difficult for most people today to imagine or comprehend. Is there anything to be gained from trying to study and understand that past? Is it possible, even for those who have the interest and curiosity, to understand what life was like for earlier generations living in rural Western Massachusetts?
If one hikes the abandoned road which still goes by the old Cook place, one can gain some sense of why such ties were strong.
Hill town farm families used the land in any way they could to earn a livelihood. Just as Frank Cook raised sheep and tapped sugar maples, Doris Hayden relates, "My father-in-law probably started his ice business in the early 1900's. There was a pond on his farm, so why not get a cash crop from it. As he grew older, my husband carried on the business until electric refrigeration killed the demand for ice." (Stone Walls: Blandford 250th Anniversary Edition, p. 6).
Harvesting ice was the most important source of income for the Hayden's in the early twentieth century. Elmer Hart, the, oldest living resident of Blandford at 90 years of age, recalls that he worked for Ralph Hayden for a while. "While Ralph took the two-horse team and wagon, I took a one-horse team and peddled ice on the side roads." Hill town residents were very resourceful in the ways they used the land to help support themselves.
Families sometimes left behind more than cellar holes and the memories of their progeny. Some were letter writers and diary keepers. The Cook family on Falls Road, for example, offer us a wonderful glimpse of what everyday life was like at the turn of the century. The Cooks were diary keepers and their notations provide us with a rich harvest of information.
In his 1891 diary, 55 year old Horace Burdette Cook, living on a 200-acre hill farm, describes typical winter chores: breaking out the road with his oxen, drawing wood, tending to his stock, fixing a harness for the colt, moving hay, chopping sap wood, repairing the ox yoke and working for William Bates. There was also time for haircuts, funerals, looking in on neighbors, and going up to the center.
In 1886, at the age of 50, Horace Cook married Lucelia Sizer. Lucelia was 39 years old at this time, and a widow with several children of her own from a previous marriage. This second marriage produced two additional children, Frank and Naomi.
In the tradition of the time, she does not tell us much about her feelings or personal life directly. But her 1904 diary does reveal a 57-year-old woman with an enormous amount of energy, working away at an endless number of tasks. Her days appear to be filled with a continuous routine of baking, cooking, mending, ironing, mopping, quilting, preserving, chopping wood and helping with other farm chores. The lives of hill town women were hard and demanding, but not without a sense of accomplishment.
There are numerous ways to learn about the past. I have mentioned and illustrated some of them in this article. My experience has taught me that people’s memories, while at times imperfect, are nonetheless invaluable. Doris Hayden, a genealogist and unofficial town historian living in Blandford since 1909, related an incident which beautifully reinforces this point. One day quite a number of years ago, she and Frank Cook were up in the Blandford Cemetery seeking some information when he reminded her, "You've got to ask us old folks questions while we are still here." I could not agree more.
The Cobble Mountain experience is significant for a number of reasons. First, it is a microcosm of what happened throughout New England during the latter part of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The construction of the dam and reservoir simply accelerated a process of change which was already well under way. Some residents were very conscious of the changes overtaking the area after the turn of the century.
Stephen Pitoniak, in his History of Western Massachusetts (p. 38), shares with the reader some poignant thoughts related to him by Mrs. Bess Banker Day, who lived in the South Quarter area during that time period. Mrs. Day recalled, "After Springfield bought up South Quarter, it was the end of the era. There were no houses left now, roads were closed, and what was once a pleasant little community of neighbors, has been left to the deer and porcupine." She also stated, "When I look back to life on the mountain, it was a contented place, between cycles. In my mother's young adulthood, the urge hit the community to Go West, young man,' and grow with the country. In mine it was 'move to the city and get a job;' forget the farm. When Springfield bought South Quarter, and put in Cobble Mountain Dam, it was the last of the mountain community."
The once active farms of the Cobble Mountain area have ceased to exist. Remnants of this community, however, still survive; they are the stone walls, cellar holes, aging sugar maples, and abandoned roads seemingly leading nowhere. We also have the memories held by the surviving children and grandchildren of those who once lived in the area. In addition, earlier inhabitants kept diaries, and wrote letters, poems and memoirs. One can also discover much about these people and their way of life from newspapers, old photographs, town reports, tax and probate court records, and many other historical tracings. It is important to keep the memory of this community alive.
The history of Cobble Mountain has something to teach us. It not only offers us a glimpse of what life was like for earlier generations, but can tell us much about the land, the patterns of people's lives and how the two interacted, i.e. how the land and nature shaped the community and vice versa. As we examine this history, we may learn something about ourselves in the process. The story of Cobble Mountain reveals much about what is basic to life wherever it exists.
What further revelations await those willing to explore the life patterns of an age gone by the history of a hill farm community - the story of Cobble Mountain? Perhaps for the curious, Cobble Mountain is not the end of an era, but rather the beginning of an adventure of discovery.
*************************************************************************************************************************************************
Byron Richards died October 16, 1987, just as this article was completed. The author will always remember, with gratitude, the lengthy conversations we had about the Cobble Mountain area and especially the walk we took down South Street to the old homestead in October of 1986.
My interest in nature and the history of hill farm communities was energized by his willingness to help and share what he knew.
Byron Herbert Richards (1905-1987) will be missed and fondly remembered.
Dietrich Schlobohm lives in West Springfield with wife, Feelie and son, Matthew. He is Professor of History at Springfield College and teaches American History. His special interest and expertise is in environmental history. He is a conservationist and amateur naturalist and enjoys the outdoors; hiking, cross country skiing, animal tracking and wilderness camping.
From Stone Walls Magazine,